The story of two benches

This post is about two benches.

I am 61, the red bench (below) is probably at least as old as I am, maybe much older. My mother says my paternal grandfather made many of them. I wonder how many are still in use, loved.

The red bench, in my kitchen, serves several purposes:

I set grocery bags there to unload.

It keeps my husband from kicking the dogs’ water bowl, which is actually a huge problem.

We pull it up to the end of the kitchen table when we have a crowd. 

It is a safe haven for one of the puppies. 

That is a puppy with a fresh haircut. She loves to lay under the bench. 

A woodworking neighborhood came and looked at the red bench and I also sent him photos. 

He made a second bench for middle’s new house, six feet long and slightly larger scale. 

The 6’ bench is made with a 21’ long 100+ year old board stored in his family barn. The board looks new because it was  planed and sanded. Middle plans to paint it. 

The 6’ bench is made with pegs and the legs are inset with dado joints. So in other words, the new bench is made with very old wood and is constructed with old school techniques like the red bench. 

Middle is very pleased. And my guess is she is the only great grandchild, of that Grandfather, who knows of and loves his benches. He died in 1982 at the age of 66.

The extended family photo project

My mother sorted/divided/distributed photos from her second husband’s side of the family a couple years ago. So all those family photos are now in the hands of his children and grandchildren. It was a huge relief to her, and to me, very smart/proactive, and as a 2nd wife, a kind thing to do. 

Then, my mom sorted out the rest of her photos and brought the lot, from our side of the family, over to my house. Hundreds and hundreds of photos. 

I absolutely wanted the photos and it was very good to do this while she was still alive. Before she gave them to me, she wrote on the back of almost all of them. And she sorted as best she could, but they were still a bit of a jumble, many envelopes, folders, boxes. 

I totally changed my mind on what to do with these photos.

My intention, at the time she gave me the piles, was to put all those extended family photos in my red genealogy binders. Thankfully I started on a few stacks, but never really got to it. 

Recently, I rethought the whole concept.  

I realized none of my kids will want any of these extended family photos. And they do not know most of these people by sight, they would not be able to sort these photos. And it would be a terrible dilemma for them. When a house gets cleaned out, probably it all just gets pitched or stored in boxes forever. (Probably they will not want my red genealogy binders either.)

So, with my husband helping me, we went through our own photo albums, my mother’s stacks (which included photos from my grandmother and great grandmother), and the red genealogy binders.  We started dividing photos, very very aggressively. Our plan - to distribute extended family photos to the extended family. 

Which extended family?

I have five maternal first cousins, all their parents/my aunts and uncles are still alive and now in their mid to late 70’s. I am not sending pictures to the older folks, who hopefully have started cleaning out their own houses. Instead I am sending directly to their kids, my first cousins. And I am sending to my niece and nephew, my brother’s children, and my brother. 

I knew I had all current addresses, from my last two years of Christmas card mailings. I am not asking anyone in advance if they wanted photos. I am not asking anyone any questions (except my mother). And I think this is key. If they want to pitch, rehome, redivide, whatever, that is on them. But those stacks of photos are all going to be out of my house and are already gone from my mother’s house.

How did we start sorting?

If you are wondering about the practicalities, we cleaned off the kitchen table, made signs to identify the piles and just dug in to the sorting on a recent Saturday.

We started with our house set of photo albums. My husband put them on the kitchen table and we went thru every picture pulling ones of just the extended family. If we were also in the pictures, sometimes we saved them, often they went in the piles.

Then we went thru my mom’s piles. This was the hard part, there were a lot. I had to do the very old ones, my husband was able to focus on my brother/niece/nephew who he could easily recognize.  

We pulled for my cousins, brother, niece, nephew. 

We saved photos of me, my mother, my grandparents, my great grandparents and great-great grandparents. I saved some of the pictures of us with other family members, I shared others. My mother thought she had destroyed all her first wedding pictures. She had not, I found an envelope full and was glad to see them. Many of the pictures I kept came from my mother’s, grandmother’s and great grandmother’s photo albums which we had disassembled several years ago. The albums were not photo safe and were crumbling. My mother wrote on the back of all the ones we pulled from albums.

Then we went thru the red genealogy binders and pulled the pertinent pictures I had already filed. 

By the end of that Saturday, we were sorted and the photos were safe in plastic bags. And we figured out and assembled boxes for shipping. 

That was a 8+ hour project, but it was easier to do the sorting all in one go. 

This photo (below) amuses me because it looks so simple. There are hundreds of photos in those bags. But, the bags all look so small in this picture. There were too many photos to use padded envelopes. We needed boxes, which I had. 

It was important to pause, a long pause in fact, I am still paused.

And then I purposely paused. The kitchen table stayed exactly like the above photo. The boxes are all addressed with the bags of photos in them,  but the boxes are not yet sealed.

By myself, taking my time, I am going back thru each plastic bag, carefully, to see if we made any mistakes or if I changed my mind about any photos. I am taking photos with my phone of a few pictures.

I called my mom and she looked thru her house several more times to be sure she had gotten everything. 

I am still looking carefully at my house to be sure we got everything. I have a large metal cabinet upstairs, which I think is full of pictures from my husband’s side, but we are going thru it now. 

And I am writing notes to include with each box, when they are eventually shipped. 

What were all these pictures? 

My cousins, niece/nephew, brother will all receive pictures of themselves solo, or with/of their family (parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, grandparents). 

Many of these pictures had come at holidays over the decades, photo Christmas cards, professional individual or family portraits, candids, baby pictures and school photos for example. There were also a lot of photos I had taken, candids from family gatherings, decades ago. I am almost 61. I often had a camera in hand as a child/teenager/young adult. And there were photos from my mom’s very old albums, my mom is 81.

A huge advantage, in dividing for my niece and nephew, was that because I had my mom’s stash and my stash, there were a lot of duplicates, so my niece and nephew each got important/identical photos in their piles. 

The rest of the sibling sets to my cousins, I just divided as evenly as I could. There are a lot of very old pictures of their parents/my aunt and uncle, in those sets that I am sure my cousins have never seen. 

Hopefully these boxes will be happily received. 

We are shipping hundreds of photos to people who, hopefully, will be very surprised and happy to receive them. Most importantly - hundreds of photos are headed out of my house and my kids will not have to deal with them. 

Surprise

I have ended up with a lot of old, extended family pictures. I add many to Find a Grave as a means of sharing.

I have also found news clippings and photos of non-family members. If I know who they are, I stop and add them to Find a Grave. When I do, my name is attached to the entry. The owner of the memorial, and anyone else looking at the site, knows who added the picture.

I had a woman contact me yesterday. I had added a birthday picture of this woman’s great grandmother to her memorial. I did not know it, but it was the last birthday the grandma had before she died (early 1960’s). And the family had never seen the picture and did not have a copy.

She wrote to see who I was and how I had the picture.

I also have an antique bed and a quilt from that family, who was a close family friend of my paternal grandparents. My grandmother had given me the picture to say - that is who gave you the bed and quilt.

So I sent the great grand daughter (who is about my age)  pictures of the bed and the quilt.

And that has led to a big hunt. Because somewhere there is a note of someone who was born in that bed. And I do not think the name meant anything to me, but probably it is someone from this woman’s family.


PS
A few of the photos, I have added to Find a Grave, have been gravestone photos. Those have been particularly thrilling. My aunt had taken pictures of very old gravestones in the 1970’s or 1980’s. The stones were just barely readable in the pictures, they were so old and weathered. (These photos were in with the family pictures she sent to me.) I looked each up on Find A Grave. I scanned and added pictures to the memorials that were missing pictures. So at the time the memorials were added to the website, the stones were gone or unreadable. I added pictures that were taken 40-50 years ago. A major surprise for someone.

As I have walked thru cemeteries and found unreadable stones for my own family, I always have the same thought - probably there were pictures of these stones. I wonder what happened to them.

Puzzles

https://www.whitemountainpuzzles.com/

If you have older kids, a house full, or just yourself, a holiday puzzle can be very fun.

In the winter of 2018, I put together almost every puzzle in the house. I set up a table in front of the loveseat in the living room and just kept going, one to the next. All variety of puzzles. I was checking to see if they were all there.

I recycled the ones that were missing pieces. I sold all the complete but junky ones. I also sold most of the wooden ones.

I saved a great number of high quality kids’ puzzles.

I saved one 1000 piece puzzle of Mackinac Island.

I think the original puzzle came from Mackinaw Island itself when we were there years ago. I think oldest and I put it together at that time. I think there is a picture somewhere of me working on this puzzle.

The girls (and their friends) and my husband have been putting it together this week. It is set up at the end of the kitchen table. Big advantage of an 8’ table, a puzzle can be set up at one end, and the table is still functional.

We have had 5-6 friends of youngest’s floating in and out of our house this break. Only one or two were here to work on the puzzle, I should have gotten it out earlier. (It might be a lot like card and board games that they only do when they are here.)

It is something I am doing (putting puzzle out over Christmas break) from this point forward. And I am sticking with this type of puzzle that can easily be put together/finished over a few days, with many people working on it. It is challenging with lots of pieces, but totally doable.

I have no desire to have a puzzle out for weeks and weeks. And with the pup, really we cannot have a puzzle out all the time. She would take pieces off the table and eat them.

I ordered three 1000 piece puzzles from the same company (above) today. I ordered from their clearance section of discontinued 1000+ piece puzzles. I had a coupon for free shipping. So I spent $30 total on three good quality puzzles.

Absolutely can find puzzles at second hand stores and garage sales. Also could get into a trading system with neighbors and friends.

So I will have a stash for future years. And I think once each is complete, I am taking a picture of the fact that it is complete and then selling it. So we do not develop a huge inventory of puzzles we have already done.

These puzzles are normally in the $15 plus shipping price range. I think I can sell them for $10 used/complete on Marketplace. And that will recoup my money. (They also could be donated to a senior center.)

Our close friends always put a puzzle out for Christmas break. It was very much a tradition. And I think it is a good one.

This could be a good gift to send to older grandkids or have out for older grandkids when they visit over the holidays. Or have out to occupy kids when older relatives visit and they need to be present and you do not want them to be bored. Everyone could sit around the dining room table while some work on the puzzle and others chat, if you have older relatives who do not like to play games.

So I think this could be incorporated into a lot of family traditions in a very positive way.

We will have extended family here over the holidays.

And most everyone loves games. That is what we do when we have a house full.

I listen to several podcasts. And games have been mentioned.

I got three for this year:

Note, youngest and her college friends went thru the Meme cards and removed the ones which were more gross than funny. We now have three stacks - PG, MA funny, MA gross. Same college kids have been playing these games, so youngest knows how to do all of them before family plays.

Also note: prices have gone up on a couple of these since I ordered.

This is a list of kid skills. It is a good list. Great summer project. Great family time.

Family pictures into matching card game for kids

I think this is a super cute idea for small children. Especially if they do not see their extended family regularly.